Kevin Flinn

Ghosts excerpt

2011-02-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming third novel, Ghosts. It's an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's classic tragedy, updated from 19th century Norway to dawn-of-the-2oth century Pennsylvania.
It'll be available for purchase in the next few months.

The fire wasn’t his fault.

Even if it was, there was no way it could be proven. Although Jacob Engstrand, one of the carpenters working on the nearly completed orphanage, had been accused on more than one occasion of being careless with matches, the official story was that a pile of sawdust in the carpenters’ shop caught fire. Luckily no one was hurt and there was no damage other than a few scorched timbers. No one had seen Engstrand with a match in his hand, so nothing could be pinned on him.

He had also been accused on more than one occasion of overindulging in alcohol, but that didn’t seem to hurt anyone but himself. Engstrand was a taciturn man, prone to fits of silent contemplation while he worked. The foreman and Engstrand’s peers respected his diligence and thoroughness as a carpenter, but there was something odd about him that they couldn’t quite place. It was as if he lacked some gene that everyone else possessed, a deficiency that caused him to remove himself from most conversation and social interaction—that is, until he had a few drinks, and then you couldn’t shut him up. He’d ramble on about anything and everything until someone shepherded him home, where he’d collapse into bed fully dressed. He’d often wake the next morning and head straight to work, which accounted for the tattered nature of his clothes.

He’d lived in Erie his entire life. Born in the fall of 1864, just as William Sherman was leading confederate troops on the infamous march to the sea some 800 miles south, Engstrand had been apprenticed to a master carpenter as a teenager, and learned his craft well: before he turned 20 he helped build Hamot Hospital at the foot of State Street; later, he participated in the construction of Saint Peter’s Cathedral on West 10th and Sassafras. His grandfather was part of the shipbuilding crew that James Madison tasked with constructing a naval fleet in order to wrest control of Lake Erie from the British during the War of 1812. Engstrand’s father had worked the railroads, which flourished in the Erie area in the mid-nineteenth century, but after the Gauge War and standardization, he decided that his son Jacob should follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and learn carpentry.

Jacob met Joanna in 1885 and loved her from the moment he saw her; while it took her some time to warm to him, once Joanna became pregnant in 1889 they were married shortly thereafter. He’d done everything in his power to raise their daughter Regina as a proper lady, but she’d learned everything she needed to know about manners and society from her mother, who worked as a maid for the Alvings, Erie’s most prominent family. When Regina was just a child, Joanna carted her along to the Alving house and Mrs. Alving welcomed Regina like one of her own. By the time of Joanna’s passing five years ago, Regina had already taken over her mother’s duties; she was now maid to Mrs. Alving and lived with her in the big house on West Sixth Street.

It was up to that very house that Engstrand trudged, through the pouring rain, the day after the sawdust-pile fire. The storm had forfeited his afternoon work for the day, and he had important things to discuss with Regina. The girl had all but disowned him and his drinking had forced him into his own personal exile. He walked with a barely noticeable limp, dragging his battered left leg slightly behind him. It hampered his gait, but Engstrand hardly even noticed it anymore. He didn’t even know when he’d injured it—one day his left leg simply didn’t work as efficiently as his right. Like most things, Jacob Engstrand took his disability in stride, even when the fellows at the Plymouth tavern teased him, suggesting that he’d hollowed out his own leg so he’d have a place to stash a fifth of whiskey.

Engstrand approached the front door of the enormous house, one of the oldest in Erie County. It had always intimidated him—it stood as a bastion of wealth and status that he’d simply never acquire or even fully understand. At the same time, the giant brick dwelling also held a special place in his heart, for it was where Joanna had worked all those years, and where Regina worked now. Knowing that he could shuffle up the walk and lift the heavy brass knocker and Regina would be summoned to his presence bolstered his heart and his resolve, giving him hope and reassurance. He swore that one day soon he’d quit drinking for good, clean himself up, start his own business. She’d have to come home then.

With those grand schemes in mind, Jacob Engstrand lifted the brass fist and let it clang against the door; it resounded with an echo like a distant rifle shot. He slid the worn leather hat from his head, holding it to his breast as a gentleman does when he enters a fine house, even as the splattering rain beat down on his graying hair, matting it to his skull. On his walk up to the door he’d seen a few lights burning in the windows; even if Mrs. Alving wasn’t home, Regina was certain to be there. He heard footsteps approaching the front door, and even if he hadn’t been in the house dozens of times previously, he could name the wood from the sound alone—the house’s atrium had been laid in red oak, harvested from an old-growth forest in central Pennsylvania, just northwest of Williamsport.

The footsteps ceased just on the other side of the heavy door, and Jacob found himself holding his breath. He gasped as the door swung inwards, revealing Regina, bathed from behind in soft yellow light. She wore a simple dark cotton dress and white apron, and her brown hair was tied back atop her head in a loose bun. She was 20 years old, radiant, and a spitting image of her mother. Engstrand wanted to reach out, hold her close, and let her know that everything was going to be all right—or perhaps he hoped she’d tell him the same.

Six Weeks to 60: Episode VI

2010-10-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

#60: 10/15/10 North Charleston Coliseum, North Charleston, SC

Looking at Friday night’s Charleston show on paper, it’s difficult to ascertain why it isn’t an Instant Classic (and who knows, maybe it will be the next 2.28.03). How can a show with such consistent heavy hitters as “Bathtub Gin”, “Stash”, “Run Like an Antelope”, “Down with Disease”, “Mike’s Groove” and “Slave to the Traffic Light” not be high in the running for Best Ever status?

Don’t get me wrong—tonight was good, and at times, great. The first set’s “Gin” (which might be the strongest Phish 3.0 version I’ve seen) and “Antelope” both exuded remarkable energy and execution; the first four songs of the second set: “Disease > Prince Caspian > Twist” and “Roses are Free” combined for an extremely strong opening to the second frame. All were well played and extremely well received by a boisterous South Carolina crowd.

The knock on last night’s show—and the knock against a number of 3.0 songs and shows—was the lack of jamming and the seeming reluctance to open the floodgates of Phish’s improvisational potential. Instead of the “Let’s see how many songs we can play” mentality, I’d like to see the band members re-hone their group interplay skills, transforming the mantra to “Let’s see how many songs we can play well.” Why bother playing “Tube” if it’s going to be truncated to three-and-a-half minutes? And yes, “Weekapaug Groove” should bookend “Mike’s Song”, but a five-minute “Weekapaug” so they can squeeze in played-out jokes like “Mexican Cousin”? I don’t get it.

Short can be OK, though, as evidenced by the mid-first set “Backwards Down the Number Line”. Reeling the song in from some of the second-set workouts it received last summer, this “Number Line” was smooth and sturdy from start to finish, clocking in near eight minutes and showcasing tight, focused playing. It was perfect.

At multiple points throughout the second set, however, it was clear that Trey’s patience seems to have dissipated from tenuous to non-existent. I understand and wholeheartedly applaud his enthusiasm—it’s great to see him hopping around and grinning wildly—but when he starts a song before the previous song has even finished, it feels forced and the dissonance grates. This eagerness showed most glaringly when he launched into the “Character Zero” encore before Mike had even strapped his bass on. What’s the rush?

I know I’m complaining a lot here (and I do have some legitimate gripes), but overall Friday’s show was better than many; while the highlights were indeed high, the lowlights weren’t really that bad—I’d still rather witness Phish run through a castrated “Tube” than hear most other bands play just about anything. I’ll take the safe, easy peaks of “Possum”, “Suzy Greenberg” and “Slave” over the best Nickelback show any day of the week. Phish still moves me, and when the band stops moving me, it’s when I’ll retire from seeing shows (which isn't happening anytime soon).

Not to belabor the point, but I feel that the beginning of the second set serves as excellent evidence of what happens when Phish—Trey, really—eases off the throttle. A healthy “Disease” ended with a beautiful, harmonious wash of ambience before leading into “Caspian”. At the point in “Caspian” where the song dips into quiet before the coda kicks in, Trey led the band smoothly into “Twist”, which featured marvelous groupthink interaction.

And so my 60th show is in the books. While it was definitely worth the trip, I’m hoping for a little more patience—and a “Harpua”—tomorrow night. Too much to ask?

Setlist:

I: Punch You in the Eye, Possum, Bathtub Gin, Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home, Boogie On Reggae Woman, Destiny Unbound, Backwards Down the Number Line, Bouncing Around the Room, Stash, Joy, Buffalo Bill, Dog Faced Boy, Run Like an Antelope

II: Down with Disease > Prince Caspian > Twist, Roses are Free, My Friend My Friend, My Problem Right There, Tube, Mike’s Song > The Horse > Silent in the Morning, Mexican Cousin, Weekapaug Groove, Suzy Greenberg, Slave to the Traffic Light

E: Character Zero

Six Weeks to #60: By the Numbers

2010-10-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

As my 60th Phish show approaches in Charleston tonight, I decided to conclude my six-week odyssey of reviewing the five “milestones” in my show-going career by listing 60 pertinent Phish facts. Unfortunately, I only came up with 34 (well, 39, if you count the ones on which I doubled up).

Most of these statistics are only worthwhile to me (and perhaps a handful of others whose fanaticism often rivals my own), but I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labors.

60: After tonight, the total number of times I’ve seen my favorite band, Phish.

57: Longest gap (in shows) for any Phish song from the first time I saw the band play it until now; the last time I saw Phish play “Crossroads” and “Dogs Stole Things” was 8.9.97 (show #2)

54: Length (in minutes) of the “Ambient Jam” that Phish played the first night of 1998's Lemonwheel (show #8), still one of my most memorable Phish experiences.

53: Number of Phish debuts I’ve seen. Ween's “Roses are Free” (12.11.97, show #4) and Prince's “1999” (12.31.98, show #14) are among my favorites.

52: Number of times I saw moe. (of my 71 moe. shows) while Phish was either on hiatus (22 shows from 2000 to ’02) or “broken up” (30 shows from ’04 to ’09)

50: Percentage of times I’ve seen Phish play Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop,” two of the four times its been played (7.20.99, show #17; and 10.10.99, show #25)

45: Number of shows between seeing The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” (8.10.96, show #1, and 3.7.09, show #45)

42: Number of shows I’ve seen in the Eastern time zone (the most in any time zone by far)

38: Number of songs I’ve seen the only time they were played (including two Halloween shows). Favorites? Bob Marley’s “Trenchtown Rock” (8.11.98, show #6) and The Police's "So Lonely" (11.14.98, show #12)

37: Number of shows I attended before Phish’s 2000 hiatus

35: Length (in minutes) of the longest Phish song I’ve witnessed, a loose, rambling “Runaway Jim” (8.11.98, show #6)

34: Stretch (in months) between 9.15.00 (my last pre-hiatus show, #37) and 7.29.03 (my first post-hiatus show, #38)

33: Number of hours (approximate) it took to drive from Camden, New Jersey to Coventry, Vermont for Phish’s “farewell” festival in 2004. We even skipped out on Camden’s “Frankenstein” encore but still missed the first two sets on 8.14.04!

32: Most shows I’ve seen with my longtime tour buddy Rick (the most of any one person)

AND

Number of shows before I saw “The Lizards” (the Phish song I “chased” the most) on 7.14.00 (show #31)

30: My 30th show was 7.11.00, the infamous “Moby Dick” show at Deer Creek

25: Number of cities in which I’ve seen Phish
22: Number of shows I’ve seen since Phish's 2000-2002 hiatus

21: Average number of songs played per show (20.6) in the 59 I’ve attended

19: Percentage of shows (11 of 59) I’ve attended that have opened with either “Punch You in the Eye” or “Chalkdust Torture”

18: Times I’ve seen “Character Zero”, “Down with Disease”, “Ghost” and “Piper” (the four songs I’ve seen the most)

17: My age when I attended my first Phish show (8.10.96)

15: My age when my high school friend Matt gave me my first Phish tape (10.19.91)

AND

Number of shows (not counting the coming weekend) I’ve seen since the band’s 2009 reunion.

14: Number of shows I’ve seen in New York (the most of any state)

12: The most Phish shows I’ve seen in a calendar year (1999)

11: Times I’ve seen “Tweezer Reprise” as an encore (no complaints!)

10: Three-set shows I’ve attended

8: The first show I owned on CD-R, my eighth (8.15.98 Lemonwheel)

7: Times I’ve seen “Down with Disease” open a second set

AND

Number of Trey solo shows I attended while Phish was either on hiatus or broken up

6: Number of shows I’ve seen at Alpine Valley and Deer Creek (six each)

5: Number of venues where I’ve seen every Phish show (Empire Polo Club, Newport State Airport, Oswego County Airport, BlueCross Arena, Vernon Downs)

AND

Number of songs in my favorite set (12.30.98 Set II, show #13)

4: My favorite show (still) is my fourth (12.11.97)

AND

Number of Phish festivals I’ve attended (Lemonwheel, Oswego, Coventry, 8)

3: Number of t-shirts I bought at my first show (8.10.96): official tour shirt, bootleg tour shirt, Cat in the Hat shirt

2: Number of times I’ve slept in my own bed after a show (11.13.98, show #11; and 7.1.10, show #55)

1: Show I had a ticket for and didn’t attend (10.19.96); at the last minute my mom decided that at 17 years old I shouldn’t be spending the night in Buffalo.

I was aided greatly during my quest by those who witnessed most of the moments above by my side (in no particular order): Rick Mattison, Ben Althof, Matt Miehl, Jeff Miller, Alex Rose, Liam Gooley, Dave Simon and Bernard Levin.

Also, huge thanks to David “ZZYZX” Steinberg’s Phish Stats site.

Six Weeks to #60: Episode V

2010-10-07T00:49:00.000-07:00

As my 60th Phish show approaches in Charleston next Friday, 10/15/10, I've decided to take a look back at the five other “milestone” shows I’ve seen over the last 14 years. Some were stellar, others were lacking, but they’re all a part of my history with the band.

Every Friday for the past five weeks, I’ve posted an essay/review of shows #10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. This is the penultimate entry, from Summer 2009.

#50: 6/21/09 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI

When Phish announced the 2009 summer tour, choosing which shows I’d attend was a no-brainer—with 47 shows under my belt at that point, I couldn’t resist returning to two of my favorite venues: Deer Creek for #48 and Alpine Valley for #49 and #50. Considering the fact that I saw shows #1 and #2 (as well as #20 and #28) at Alpine, a sentimentality washed over me as I submitted my ticket requests.

12 years earlier, my cousins Peter and Sarah accompanied me to Alpine for my second show. I’d been listening to Phish non-stop for nearly three years at that point, and thought I knew everything there was to know about the band. On that August night in 1997, I realized how little I actually knew (“The Landlady” in the middle of “Punch You in the Eye”? No way!), but it only whet my appetite for more Phish.

47 shows later, I met Peter and three of his buddies from the University of Wisconsin in Lake Geneva for the two-night weekend stand. Saturday night featured a stellar “Maze” (good enough for inclusion as one of six tracks on the band’s Summer 2009 Sampler), and a “Makisupa Policeman” which saw Trey explicitly reference his 2006 arrest for the first time on stage (“Woke up this morning / Pissing in Jah cup / Woke up in the afternoon / Called my probation officer”).

Phish opened Sunday’s Father Day show (the last on the first leg of the tour) with the appropriate one-two familial combination of “Brother” and “Wolfman’s Brother”; the first “Brother” since 2003 featured all seven of the band member’s children frolicking in a huge metal tub at the front of the stage.

After “Wolfman’s”, Trey acknowledged a fan who’d been holding a sign all Friday night, and the first “Funky Bitch” of Phish 3.0 preceded a run of songs that fit the 3.0 mold—concise, not-so-jammy material like “Joy”, “Taste” and “Back on the Train”. My second “The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday” suite (the first was also at Alpine in 1999) was just as messy as the first.

The sweeping (and much-maligned) “Time Turns Elastic” finished the first frame, and while there’s a vocal group of fans who absolutely loathe Trey’s multi-segmented epic, citing its many movements as a momentum killer, I’m kinda partial to it and think it functions best as a first-set closer. Trey seems to have heard the criticism—Phish played “Elastic” at 25% of its shows in 2009 (12 of 47), the song has only appeared at 3% of 2010 shows (3 of 29). If it survives this fall, I’d like to see Phish tinker with its placement, perhaps as the middle of a “Mike’s Song > Time Turns Elastic > Weekapaug Groove” sandwich.

Although the first set started with a full head of steam, it lost focus relatively early and simply couldn’t regain it. The second set was a different animal completely, showcasing both originals and covers played with high energy in near-perfect placement. I’m not the only one who holds this opinion, though—when I interviewed Page for a Festival 8 preview two months after Alpine, he referenced this set specifically as a highlight of the tour.

While researching this essay, I was surprised to learn that Phish has covered the Talking Heads’ “Crosseyed & Painless” only 14 times since its Halloween 1996 debut. This “Crosseyed” spiraled around Trey’s fiery leads (which Page matched skillfully on the piano) before downshifting into a lush collage of sounds. These synth-heavy feedback symphonies became the norm for ending big jams in 2009, but the focus in 2010 has been an impatient Trey leaping into another song before the current song has wound its way down (often leaving his bandmates playing something contrary). I'd be more than content to see Phish return to the '09 endings as I've always loved the band's cool, ethereal work.

The end of the “Crosseyed” jam blended beautifully into the slippery, aquatic intro to “Down with Disease” (one of Phish’s heaviest hitters, played at 25% of shows since the comeback—only “Possum” has made more appearances). As “Disease” peaked around the 7:00 mark, Page hopped from the piano to clavinet to organ, escorting his bandmates into a beautiful few minutes of music as this jam also veered into a lush, mellow section before gliding into “Bug”.

Say what you will about Phish’s ballads (I love ‘em), but when they’re artfully placed in a set—as was the case here—they function just as well as “Harry Hood” or “David Bowie”. As much as fans may claim they clamor for them, neither band nor audience could withstand a full set of barnstorming epics.

After “Bug”, a feisty “Piper” contained Phish’s fallback two-chord chop-jam (it’s all over Summer 2009 and goes as far back as Summer 2004) that gives Mike plenty of room to showcase his chops; he didn’t disappoint here, switching on a flanger effect as Fish toyed with every different type of drum fill in his arsenal. A discordant jam reminiscent of more than one “Tweezer” from the mid-90s followed and segued into another poignant ballad, “Wading in the Velvet Sea”.

(I’ll admit that I wept along with Page during the “Velvet” at Coventry. This song has held a special place in my heart since its inclusion on The Story of the Ghost, and was pleased to hear another of my favorite of Phish’s slower numbers.)

The opening notes of Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie on Reggae Woman” drew enthusiastic applause although it didn’t stray very far from its traditional structure. “Slave to the Traffic Light” ended the set in ho-hum fashion—while I’ll never tire of hearing the song, it lacks the punch it once had. This was a good “Slave” (certainly better than no “Slave at all!), but the song’s true return to form wouldn’t come until the end of the tour’s second leg in Hartford a month later.

Even though the set clocked in at 75 minutes, for some reason I expected (hoped?) it would have been longer—I held out hope for a “Mike’s Groove” after “Slave”, but it was not to be. Instead, the band stepped toward the edge of the stage and delivered the jokey acapella “Grind”, then upped the comedy ante with a well-worn cover of Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”. Since Phish’s return to touring in March 2009, when “Frankenstein” rears its head Page dons an old-school Keytar, reportedly purchased from James Brown (no doubt on his least funky night). Tonight, Mike strapped on a flame-covered bass and Trey an over-the-top ridiculous five-necked guitar.

“Frankenstein” wasn’t the tightest it’s ever been, but the humor value was there, and we laughed all the way back to the car. Show #50 was in the books, and while it was uneven in spots, I was thankful that I took the opportunity to return to familiar ground (with familiar faces) for an ultimately memorable event. I was glad I made the trip (as I always am).

Setlist:

I: Brother, Wolfman's Brother, Funky Bitch, The Divided Sky, Joy, Back On The Train, Taste, Poor Heart, The Horse > Silent in the Morning, The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, Time Turns Elastic

II: Crosseyed and Painless > Down with Disease > Bug, Piper > Wading in the Velvet Sea, Boogie On Reggae Woman, Slave to the Traffic Light

E: Grind, Frankenstein

Next time: 60 shows by the numbers

Six Weeks to #60: Episode IV

2010-09-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

As my 60th Phish show approaches on in Charleston on Friday, 10/15/10, I've decided to take a look back at the five other “milestone” shows I’ve seen over the last 14 years. Some were stellar, others were lacking, but they’re all a part of my history with the band.

Every Friday for the next six weeks, I’ll post an essay/review of shows #10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. This is the fourth entry, from the ill-fated Vegas run in April of 2004.

#40: 4/16/04 Thomas and Mack Center, Las Vegas, NV

As the crown jewel in what’s otherwise a mostly-unlistenable run (like winning the 100-meter dash when your opponents are castoffs from The Biggest Loser), my 40th show wasn’t exactly on par with #10 or #30. It'll definitely give #20 a run for its money as the least impressive of the "milestone" shows that comprise this project.

Some call this three-night stand “The Death of Phish”. It’s a tough argument to disprove, seeing as 37 days after these shows, Trey issued his “We’re done” announcement, ending the all-too-short return from hiatus and effectively breaking up the band (for the time being). The rumors of rampant drug use, overdoses and hospitalizations ran wild this weekend, with everything from “Kuroda’s in rehab” (the lighting director missed his first shows in 15 years) to “Trey’s on coke” (his voice grew weaker and scratchier each night) making their way around the arena, hotels and casinos.

For me, the spring of 2004 whirled by quickly—it was my first two-week spring break from teaching, and I zipped from San Antonio for the Final Four to Puerto Vallarta for vacation to Vegas for Phish. The drive from Los Angeles to Vegas was always one of my favorite parts of the trip; in fact, I never once flew to Sin City in my seven years of living in L.A. From the must-have arm-length burrito at Baja Taco in Victorville, California to the World’s Largest Thermometer in Baker (below), the drive was always worthwhile and memorable. (Even when the CD player in Alex’s Explorer broke we were forced to listen to the entire Weird Al catalog on cassette or the radio on “scan”.)

Seeing as the Continental Club Hotel & Casino was no more, we installed our group at the San Remo, about a mile from UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center. We figured we’d walk to and from the venue nightly, but we forgot that we’d also be seeing moe. at the House of Blues after each Phish show; after trying to wrangle cabs the first night, we wound up driving the next two.

Thursday night’s setlist looks marvelous on paper, but it just didn’t have any guts—a run of “46 Days > Drowned > 2001 > Down with Disease > Free” in the second set should have any Phish fan licking his or her chops, but instead it was sloppy, uninspired and poorly executed. When my friend Liam (who was in town for a conference but couldn’t make the shows) called Thursday night post-show, he expected a glowing report from cloud nine; instead, I expressed my underwhelmed thoughts as I cabbed it to Mandalay Bay to see moe. blow Phish out of the proverbial water. (Pun intended.)

On Friday night Phish was infinitely better. The first set featured a rare first-set "Rock and Roll", a why haven’t they ever done that before? segue from “Back on the Train” to “Possum”; a graceful “Strange Design” (by far my favorite Phish ballad); and a storming “Taste” to close.

The opening of the second set defined the run, featuring the strongest versions of “Gotta Jibboo” and “Twist” that Phish 2.0 performed. The "Twist" is remarkable mostly because it's dark and dirty, mostly owing to the gritty tone that Trey preferred in the post-hiatus years. I’ll even stack this “Twist” against any other version out there, including 4/2/98 (funky, groove-heavy) and 6/14/00 (ambient, spacey). While there’s some discordant wanking about halfway through, by the 17:00 minute mark the jam kicks over into “Disease”-sounding territory, leading to Trey firing off peak after peak in a furious ascenion of notes before settling back down to the “Twist” ending. It just smokes.

Download the “Twist” jam and hear for yourself.

The other notable portion of the second set was the appearance of Fish’s “Sonic Dress”, which was crated by conceptual artist Alyce Santoro and made of old cassette tapes from the drummer’s collection . During “Love You”, he donned a garment similar to his orange-circle muumuu and special tape-head gloves and “played” the dress in lieu of a vacuum solo. It didn’t really sound like much of anything, and some in attendance swore it was all a hoax—they thought Fish was simply playing his washboard underneath the dress.

After the “musical suit” made its one-and-only onstage appearance, “Waves” melted into the delicate “Lifeboy” (my first), which featured some precise interplay among all the band members. It always amazes me how quiet an arena gets during intimate Phish moments such as this—at most rock shows, there’s always someone blabbing on a cell phone or woo-hooing at the top of his lungs, but the pin-drop hush that fell during “Lifeboy” was truly breathtaking. Perhaps our collective subconscious could feel the end of Phish dawning, and wanted to savor every moment. Perhaps everyone was just high on Vegas. Perhaps everyone was asleep. (All are viable options.)

Standard versions of “The Horse > Silent in the Morning,” “Loving Cup” and “Harry Hood” finished out the night, and as we fled to the parking lot, the car, and the House of Blues, I couldn’t help but be somewhat impressed that even in the midst of a less-than-stellar run of shows, the highlights were still pretty high. In fact, I still listen to the “Twist” quite often; it’s on a playlist of Phish songs to which I run when I’m doing distance.

The next night—the last of Phish’s Vegas shows for the foreseeable future—was a blast, but hit-and-miss musically. My longtime show-going partner Jeff managed to coerce 18,000 or so fans to partake in the “Meatstick” dance at setbreak, prompting Trey to insert “Meatstick” references into most of the songs in the second set. (This was also often referenced as one of the knives in the band’s gut before Trey was busted for drugs in 2006; Jeff took a decent amount of unfair flak for provoking the night’s antics.)

If and when Phish returns to the Thomas & Mack, I’ll do everything in my power to make it. Given the advertised clean-and-sober vibe of the reunion tours, I’d say more Vegas shows are less than likely, but I also believed that the band broke up in August 2004. Until then, I’ll cross my fingers and keep arguing the merits of that “Twist”.

Setlist:

I: Seven Below, Rock and Roll, Boogie On Reggae Woman, Back on the Train > Possum, Strange Design, Gumbo, Brian and Robert, Taste

II: Gotta Jibboo, Twist, Camel Walk, Wilson, Hold Your Head Up > Love You > Hold Your Head Up, Waves > Lifeboy, The Horse >
Silent in the Morning, Loving Cup

E: Harry Hood

Next week: I return to the scene of the crime!

Six Weeks to #60: Episode III

2010-09-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

As my 60th Phish show approaches on in Charleston on Friday, 10/15/10, I decided to take a look back at the five other “milestone” shows I’ve seen over the last 14 years. Some were stellar, others were lacking, but they’re all a part of my history with the band.

Every Friday for the next six weeks, I’ll post an essay/review of shows #10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. This is the third entry, the "Moby Dick" show from Deer Creek in the summer of 2000.

#30: 7/11/00 Deer Creek, Noblesville, IN

Trust me, folks: this one is as good as advertised.

The mid-week Deer Creek run in summer 2000 was my first three-night stand at the same venue (I’d also eventually see Vegas ’04, Hampton ’09, Festival 8 and the Greek ’10 runs). Because of the precedent set this night, I’ve always held fast to the belief that the middle night of a three-night stand is the best (also proven by the Vegas, 8 and Greek runs).

Listen to the entire Deer Creek 2000 run.

Five of my closest friends banded together and crowded into a Ford Explorer for what would be our last tour as a group—Phish went on its first hiatus later that year and we graduated from college the following spring—then came jobs, weddings, and children (not necessarily in that order) and most of us couldn’t see as many shows (at least in a row) as we used to.

We started our seven-show mini-tour at our homebase of Starlake, about a half-hour west of Pittsburgh. From there, we stayed in luxury in Lake Geneva after the Alpine show the next night, and thankfully we didn’t need to make another hurried drive to Indiana (as we did a year earlier).

The shift from our own beds and showers in Wisconsin to rustic camping in Indiana was a bit jarring, especially in the July humidity. We “showered” in the bathrooms at Wal-Mart and killed time during the day at the nearby public swimming pool (with a 10-meter board).

Following a very solid Monday night show (with an excellent “Bathtub Gin” and a marvelously spacey “Fee > What’s the Use?”), we hiked through the cornfields that used to surround Deer Creek. (Imagine my surprise when I returned to the venue in 2009 to see it surrounded by strip malls and housing developments!)

We parked our posse about halfway up the lawn, just slightly Page-side of center, and with tortillas, balloons and marshmallows soaring back and forth like tracers, Phish trotted out its cover of The Mustangs’ “Ya Mar”, which might be the band’s best opener for a steamy summer show.

After “The Moma Dance” and my first “Uncle Pen” came a rare first-set “Drowned” (the song has been played 33 times since its Halloween ’95 debut; only seven of those have been in first sets) that served as a springboard for one of the most memorable (and admittedly bizarre) musical excursions of Phish’s career. Leaving behind The Who’s song about ten minutes in, the band found itself locked into a tight stop-and-start groove that had the audience exchanging what song is this? glances—it was that familiar.

Now, I don’t know how or why a copy of 12.10.94 (from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium) ever wound up in my tape collection, but there are two songs from that show that I distinctly remember—the short-but-sweet version of “Simple” that made it onto A Live One and the first encore, a striated, less tongue-in-cheek-angsty take on “Chalkdust Torture” during which Trey introduced each member of the crew. It became known as “Chalkdust Torture Reprise” because they’d played "Chalkdust" proper to close the first set of that show in ’94, and it became a running gag among my tour buddies—we’d sneak up on each other and, mimicking Trey, yell “GREENPEACE MIKE!” at the top of our lungs. (At 21 years old, this was hilarious. At 31... yeah, it's still hilarious.)

When the what song is this? looks were being exchanged, I couldn’t help but thinking that we were witnessing the second coming of “Chalkdust Reprise”. Sure enough, the jam came to a halt, kicked in again in a different key, and history was made. “Torture… torture… torture… Chalkdust Torture!” echoed the refrain over the raucous, appreciative cheering of the 24,000 in attendance. It was one of those perfectly Phishy moments—playful yet musically engaging, a callback to bygone days and a winking reminder that the band still had it.

Unsurprisingly, a blazing, straight-ahead “Chalkdust Torture” preceded “Theme From the Bottom” and “Cavern”, leaving us to a setbreak filled with a combination of stupefied “What the hell was that?” and ecstatic “How amazing was that?” The “Chalkdust” antics only whet our appetites for more music and more mayhem, both of which Phish would deliver in spades in the second set.

I will never, ever argue with the combination of “2001” and “Down With Disease” to open a second set. Ever. I would’ve loved to see Phish in the summer of 1993, when nearly every second set opened with “2001” (although in hindsight, I prefer the late ‘90s funkfests to the truncated early four-minute versions). “Disease” is, quite simply, my favorite Phish song, one that I could witness every night and not tire of hearing.

About a half hour into the set (and 13 or so minutes into a fierce “Disease” jam), Trey began teasing Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick” (which Phish had played once before, as an encore of the 11.29.97 Worcester show with the historic hour-long “Runaway Jim”); Page caught on first, aping the signature riff on the organ. What sounded like just that—a tease—mellowed into a jam akin to the “Chalkdust Reprise” from the first set before Mike and Fish locked into the “Moby Dick” rhythm, and lo and behold, Phish was playing “Moby Dick” for the second time (but definitely not the last).

After storming through the end of “Disease” after “Moby Dick”, we got a tasteful “Runaway Jim” that flowed smoothly into another “Moby Dick”. What next? “Back on the Train > Moby Dick > Back on the Train” after which Trey jokingly asked, “You guys like ‘Moby Dick’?”

I thought the comedic portion of the show had ended when “Harry Hood” began, but with more “Moby Dick” teases from each band member, it was clear that Phish hadn’t had their fill of this particular gag yet. The “Hood” was absolutely sublime however, and is still one of my favorite versions that I’ve seen. Elsewhere in the lawn someone juggled fire during the customary glowstick war, the band was firing on all cylinders, and I was as ecstatically joyful as I’ve ever been at a show. It was one of those perfect “you had to be there” moments that I dare not try to put into words for fear that the magic of the memory might be tarnished. (Sorry.)

I genuinely thought that “Hood” would end the set, but Fishman (introduced by Trey as “fresh from his starring role in Gladiator—Mr. Russell Crowe!) strutted to the front of the stage to sing “Terrapin” and run laps around the stage while the rest of the band vamped on—what else?—“Moby Dick”!

What could they possibly play for an encore that could effectively cap off such a night? Appropriately enough was the peak-laden “First Tube” (being played for only the second time as an encore), which dropped directly into the final “Moby Dick” of the evening before Phish settled back into “Chalkdust Reprise”, during which Trey introduced the crew, then effusively thanked the crowd “for coming to the concert” and encouraged us to “buy the book and see the movie! The Phish! From Vermont!”

Watch every "Moby Dick" tease and the "Chalkdust Reprise" encore:

As the house lights sparked to life, the same how amazing was that? look spread over the countenances of thousands of attendees. There was a palpable buzz in the air; we all knew we’d just witnessed something incredibly special and monumental, a show that would go down in the books as one of the most unique—if not best—that Phish had ever played. Trudging back to the campground, we encountered ear-to-ear grins everywhere we looked; not only were we members of the not-so-secret fraternity of Phishheads, but we’d just been privy to the stuff of legends, and we knew it.

Within the past few years, a soundboard/audience matrix of this show has surfaced, but I honestly haven’t listened to the entire show more than a half-dozen times in the last ten years. I’ll admit that it doesn’t hold up as well on tape as some other “epic” shows, but that’s OK—as much as I’d love a pristine, remastered archival release, I’m content to let the magic remain in the summer of 2000, drifting above cornfields and campgrounds and the mystique of Deer Creek.

Setlist:

I: Ya Mar, The Moma Dance, Uncle Pen, Drowned > Chalkdust Torture Reprise > Chalkdust Torture, Theme from the Bottom, Cavern

II: 2001 > Down With Disease > Moby Dick > Down With Disease, Runaway Jim > Moby Dick, Back On The Train > Moby Dick > Back On The Train, Harry Hood > Moby Dick, Hold Your Head Up > Terrapin > Hold Your Head Up > Moby Dick > Hold Your Head Up, Character Zero

E: First Tube > Moby Dick > Chalkdust Torture Reprise

Next week: Vegas, baby, Vegas.

Six Weeks to #60: Episode II

2010-09-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

As my 60th Phish show approaches on in Charleston on Friday, 10/15/10, I decided to take a look back at the five other “milestone” shows I’ve seen over the last 14 years. Some were stellar, others were lacking, but they’re all a part of my history with the band.

Every Friday for the next six weeks, I’ll post an essay/review of shows #10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. This is the second entry, from Summer 1999.

#20: 7/24/99 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI

Anyone who was there will tell you: while on paper this show looks like a steaming pile of (Happy Whip and) Dung, it had a few redeeming moments—not many of them, but it did have them.

After the great deluge that fell during the encores the previous night in Columbus, my two touring companions and I stuffed our soggy clothes in the cooler and began the all-night drive to Wisconsin. Having seen my first and second shows (in 1996 and ’97, respectively) at Alpine, I was extremely excited to return, having missed Phish’s stop there in ’98.

11 years later the details are hazy, but I distinctly remember sitting in dead-stop traffic on the Chicago Skyway sometime that Saturday afternoon, baking in my ’89 Chevy Celebrity. Since the car had no air conditioning, we tried to drive at night to avoid the mid-July Midwest swelter, but for some reason, there we were—windows rolled down, Matt handing out the remaining ice cubes from the cooler, heat rising off the asphalt in waves—it was torture.

I recall making it to Alpine just barely in time, and as we negotiated our way down the sloping lawn toward the pavilion, there were rumors circulating that Phish had been stuck in the same snarling Chicago traffic that had ensnared us hours earlier. Someone in the seats near us claimed that the stage crew soundchecked in place of the band. With such a weird vibe hanging in the air, logic dictated that a completely unbalanced show would follow.

After a well-received “Guyute” opener, Phish unreeled the longest “Fluffhead” ever played, a 33-minute odyssey that featured 15 minutes of jamming after the song’s traditional structure. (Keep in mind that this show was before the band’s first hiatus, when “Fluffhead” still appeared roughly once a week in the summer of ’99.)

After leaving behind “Fluffhead” proper, the jam thrashed around for a bit, then settled into a loopy, Mike Gordon-led groove. As Trey Anastasio began soloing in a higher register, Page McConnell moved to the clavinet and the jam changed gears, from a major-key “Boogie On” jam to a darker, “Sand”-esque sound. Anastasio squiggled on his keyboard, then experimented with some backwards-sounding guitar effects before finding a repeating phrase (copied by Gordon) that pushed the jam to its peak.

The remainder of the set is painfully standard and woefully sloppy, unfortunately foreshadowing an even messier second set. “Fluffhead” slid awkwardly into my first “The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday” (which I wouldn’t see again for another 30 shows, remarkably back at Alpine) and was followed by “The Wedge” and “Character Zero”, neither of which were remarkable nor memorable.

Highlights of the second set are unfortunately few. What should’ve been a special treat (the quirky “Catapult”, which was part of an erratic-yet-ecstatic third set at Camp Oswego a week earlier) was disastrously sung over top of “Tweezer”. “The Happy Whip and Dung Song”, a portion of a studio jam from The Siket Disc, combined with the ballad “Waste” (which I usually love), dragged the set’s momentum to a sludgy halt. Phish attempted to recover its fire during “Chalkdust Torture”, during which Anastasio attempted ridiculous rock-star backwards somersaults and theatrics (around the 8:00 mark of the video below), but it wasn’t quite enough to savlage an ailing show.

By the encore break, many people were already shuffling towards the exits, preparing for the daring climb up the second-steepest lawn in the United States (I felt like I needed ski poles and crampons to negotiate the mini-lawn at Berkeley's Greek Theater this past August). Thinking about the 250-mile drive to Deer Creek and the mediocre-at-best show we’d just witnessed, my friends and I seriously contemplated bolting; instead, we braced ourselves for what (we hoped) would be a redeeming encore.

The four songs Phish would play as encores that night confirmed why I’ve devoted so many hours and dollars to seeing their shows, buying their albums and merchandise, and generally being a hardcore fan.

Beginning with “Glide” (which was being played about once a year in the late ‘90s) and continuing through “Camel Walk” (played for only the fifth time since its 1997 revival), the super-rare “Alumni Blues” (last played in 1994, with 426 shows since its last appearance... you can hear the appropriate roar of applause during the first 10 seconds of the video above) and “Tweezer Reprise”, the four-pack of encores felt as though the band was saying, “Hey guys, we’re sorry we blew this one. Here are some kick-ass songs that we don’t play very often. Thanks for sticking with us!”

It was an affirmation, pure and simple, and I’m damn glad I stayed. Did the encores make up for what was otherwise a lackluster show? Perhaps. Before sitting down to write this piece, those four songs (and the “Fluffhead” jam) were all I remembered from this night; I haven’t gone back to re-listen since the show. Honestly, I probably won’t listen to it again, but the memories are there.

Oh, and that 250-mile drive to Indiana that we undertook that night? It ended roughly 30 miles from Alpine in Janesville, Wisconsin. Not five minutes after leaving the venue, my brakes cut out and my Celebrity jumped the median; we drove the wrong way on the highway for nearly a mile, then somehow found our way to the Farm & Fleet, where we slept on (not in) the car and got the brakes fixed the following afternoon, just in time for a beat-the-clock race to Deer Creek for what turned out to be the show of the summer (perhaps the entire year), the polar opposite of Alpine’s Jekyll-and-Hyde session.

Setlist:

I: Guyute, Fluffhead > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > The Wedge, Character Zero

II: Tweezer > Catapult > Tweezer, The Mango Song, The Happy Whip and Dung Song, Waste, Chalkdust Torture

E: Glide, Camel Walk, Alumni Blues, Tweezer Reprise

Next week: the White Whale (Reprise) in an Indiana cornfield

Six Weeks to #60: Episode I

2010-09-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

As my 60th Phish show approaches on Friday, 10/15/10, I decided to take a look back at the five other “milestone” shows I’ve seen over the last 14 years. Some were stellar, others were lacking, but they’re all a part of my history with the band.

Every Friday for the next six weeks, I’ll post an essay/review of shows #10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. Up first is my tenth show, Halloween ’98.

#10: 10/31/98 Thomas and Mack Center, Las Vegas, NV

1998 was a banner Phish year for me—I attended my first festival (Lemonwheel), Halloween, and New Year’s shows—and what began as a passion suddenly was hurtling towards obsession.

When a friend from college offered me his extra ticket for Halloween I certainly felt the urge, but as Ithaca, New York sits roughly 2400 miles east of Las Vegas, I didn’t really give the idea much serious thought. Two days before the Saturday show, however, a missive from e-savers (remember them?) clicked into my inbox, advertising cheap flights from Syracuse to Vegas. How could I resist?

I arrived at McCarran around 9:00 that Friday and decided against taking a cab (in hindsight, an epic mistake—the second set from 10/30/98 turned out to be a monster, one that I painfully regret missing to this day) in favor of hoofing it to the The Continental Club Hotel & Casino, where my compatriots Jeff and Alex had set up the day prior.

What looked on the map like a brief walk was actually two fairly grueling miles through the gusty desert with a heavy backpack atop my shoulders. I should’ve sped over to the Thomas & Mack for the remainder of the show, but instead I cruised around the Continental (now known as Terrible’s), which felt like one of Cousin Eddie’s ramshackle casinos from Vegas Vacation. Seriously: to call this place a dive would be to insult dives everywhere.

I was briefly pondering seeing the helmet-haired Vegas legend Cook E. Jarr when my friends burst in, raving about what an amazing show they’d just seen—the first “Long Cool Woman” in 15 years, the premiere of Jimmy Smith’s “Back at the Chicken Shack” and an acapella “Freebird” encore. Marvelous. Added bonus: I basically walked right past the venue on my way from the airport without realizing it.

The next day we tooled around the strip in Alex’s Saturn, abusing the P.A. he’d installed in the hood (“Attention hippies: Take a bath”) and engaging in general Vegas-esque mischief. I’d decided to play one slot machine in each casino, and eventually won $20 at the MGM Grand (and subsequently was chased from the premises by security when I wouldn’t show them my ID that confirmed my 19 years of age).

I called home from the next casino to let my parents know where I was. “Syracuse?” my dad guessed. “New York?” Nope, try again. “Guess where your son is?” he shouted to my mother when I revealed my location. For the guy who once hitchhiked from coast to coast, I expected more congratulatory praise for my impulsive Kerouacian adventure.

After waiting in line for a few hours at Thomas & Mack, I was elected to sprint into the arena to save seats for the general admission show. I grabbed the Browadway-style Phishbill that spoiled what I’d hoped would be a surprise costume set and bolted into the lower bowl, Page-side, about halfway between the stage and the soundboard. Saving seats turned out to be a monumental task, and I eventually retired, finding the rest of the group on the opposite side of the arena. (Side note: how did we ever make that work without cell phones?)

The first set was relatively standard for ’98 Phish (meaning it was average-great, but not mind-blowing). Alex’s buddy freaked out during a mid-set “Sneaking Sally Through the Alley”, exasperatedly breathing “ROB-ERT PAL-MER!” as though he’d simultaneously solved Molyneux’s Problem while ending world hunger. Jeff called the smooth transition from “Sneaking Sally” into “Chalkdust Torture”, and I was stoked to hear “Mike’s Song” a few tunes later.

This was my fourth “Mike’s” in ten shows (certainly no complaints there!) but as I’d yet to hear “I am Hydrogen”, I was a bit let down as the band moved into the then-newish “Frankie Says” (although in hindsight the spacey, textural song was an inspired choice for All Hallow’s Eve) and on into the set-closing “Weekapaug Groove”.

We leafed through the Phishbill during setbreak, chuckling at the “Roggae” and “Dirt” faux-advertisements. Many fans looked at each other quizzically as they also read, wondering why Phish chose the Velvet Underground’s Loaded over the heavily-rumored (and heavily-favored) Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon. In retrospect, the gesture defined the band at this time—while some of the playfulness that characterized its early years had dissipated, Phish had grown into a group that favored simplicity, and Loaded fit that bill. No horns, no guests, no quirky compositions—just a classic rock record that perfectly reflected the mature, 15-year-old Phish and introduced a number of jam fans to the genius of Lou Reed.

Phish’s rendition of the Velvets’ 1970 album was an instant hit that October night, with the deft and subtle Phishy touch applied to a batch of tried and true Reed compositions. Highlights of the Loaded set included a rousing take on “Sweet Jane” (the only VU song I knew at that point) followed by a nearly 14-minute-long version of “Rock and Roll” that hinted at the song’s enormous potential as a jamming springboard, especially as a frequent second-set opener for Phish 3.0.

The Fishman-led “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” arrived towards the end of the set, venturing from the song proper into a jam reminiscent of the Phish’s own “Possum” before delving into one of the lush, ambient soundscapes that defined Phish in 1998 (and foreshadowed the dark-and-dirty experimentation that followed in Set III).

A poignant, triumphant “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” closed the Loaded set in style, and I long lamented the fact that this song didn’t make it into the regular rotation (although I won’t argue with “Rock and Roll” every third show nowadays). Imagine my surprise and elation last August when “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” materialized at Shoreline, and three more times since then.

The third set? Depends who you ask. Some call it one of the biggest trainwrecks in the band’s storied career, while others call it a piece of sublime exploration. Opening with a half-hour “Wolfman’s Brother”, Phish left the song proper behind quickly, and by ten minutes in were pushing the boundaries hard. At the 20-minute mark, Fishman was playing vacuum over a wall of sound. 25 minutes after the set began, the band was loping through a sparse funk groove, eventually settling on “Piper”, which ran pretty straightforward and melted into “Ghost”.

Here’s where it really gets interesting and where the stories start to conflict. After about eight minutes of a solid “Ghost”, Trey simply put down his guitar and walked offstage. I’ve heard that someone slipped him something backstage; I’ve heard he was simply freaked out by Vegas; I’ve heard he was trying to channel Lou Reed’s obstinate nature. (OK, I made the last one up.) Suffice to say, the faithful were incredibly confused. After such a spirited jaunt through Loaded, seeing the band play a whacked-out space-jam set and end it abruptly didn’t sit well with a lot of heads (myself included).

Confusion and tension reigned in the few minutes before the end of the third set and the encore (would there even be an encore after that?), and when Phish re-took the stage, I could only think of Fishman as the family member who acts a fool when his parents are fighting in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. He rollicked the band through an amusing “Sleeping Monkey” and a downright thunderous and emphatically cathartic “Tweezer Reprise” that closed the show.
I lingered in Vegas for a few extra days (the side effect of the e-saver ticket), running into Phish fans here and there, always inquisitive of their thoughts regarding the end of the Halloween show. Most were just as stupefied as I was, but some were very genuinely concerned that the band was in trouble (it turns out they were, although it would take six years and another Vegas run to bring said trouble to the forefront).

I flew home the following Tuesday, admittedly a bit nervous about the future of Phish. When my roommate Rick picked me up in Syracuse, he handed me a printed setlist from the previous night’s show in Salt Lake City—imagine my joy at discovering that not only was my favorite band alive and well, but had covered Dark Side in its entirety in Utah.

Was I jealous that I missed it? Yeah, a little.

Would I trade it for my Phish-Halloween-Vegas experience, and the introduction of Loaded into my life?

Not a bet worth taking.

Setlist:

I: Axilla I, Punch You in the Eye, Roggae, Birds of a Feather, Sneaking Sally Through the Alley > Chalkdust Torture > Lawn Boy, Mike's Song > Frankie Says > Weekapaug Groove

II: Who Loves the Sun, Sweet Jane, Rock and Roll, Cool it Down, New Age, Head Held High, Lonesome Cowboy Bill > I Found a Reason, Train Round the Bend, Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

III: Wolfman's Brother > Piper > Ghost

E: Sleeping Monkey, Tweezer Reprise

Next week: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Summer '99

Review of Phish at the Greek (Night 1)

2010-08-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

A year to the date of Phish’s last appearance in the Bay Area, the Vermont foursome opened the second leg of its summer tour at Berkeley’s Greek Theater on Thursday night.

Phish’s set slightly resembled last summer’s Shoreline stop (“The Divided Sky”, “Halley’s Comet”, “Down With Disease” and “Maze”), but the playing—and of course the atmosphere—were far superior this time around. Many fans expected a bit of rust to have gathered since Phish’s last performance on July 4th near Atlanta, but the band was on point all night, foreshadowing what promises to be a historic week of shows, with two more at the Greek followed by two in Telluride, Colorado early next week.

Opening the night with a buoyant “Possum” and leaping into the funky “Wolfman’s Brother”, the 90-minute first set was paced well, with the awkward stop-and-start transition from “Halley’s” into “Sample in a Jar” standing out as the only gaffe.

After a run of the band’s shorter, sing-a-long numbers (“Sample”, “NICU”, “Bouncing Around the Room”), Phish closed its first set at the Greek since a scorching tour closer in 1993 with “Run Like an Antelope”, one of four songs in Thursday’s show that the band also played that August night in ’93.

“Antelope” has become a go-to first-set closer this summer, finishing off five of the 19 opening segments thus far. Deservedly so, as it’s one of the finest examples of classic Phish: a jaunty opening section precedes a build to a roaring crescendo, finishing off a batch of 10 songs that were enjoyable, yet not terribly adventurous.

The musical bravado that was Phish’s calling card in the mid-1990s surfaced on occasion in the second set, most notably during the set-opening “Disease”. The 15-minute romp featured excellent interplay early in the jam between Anastasio and keyboardist Page McConnell, as the latter traced piano themes around the guitarist’s leads, before moving to the organ as bassist Mike Gordon took the reins, pacing the song with bouncy runs that drummer Jon Fishman augmented nicely, never drawing attention away from Anastasio’s soloing, instead locking into a solid groove while finding spaces for tom-tom fills and cymbal splashes.

Certainly, this “Disease” was the highlight of the evening, as it was the night’s most venturesome offering. Quality takes on “Free”, “Alaska” and “Back on the Train” followed before Fishman led the band into a mid-set “Maze”, which featured formidable solos from McConnell and Anastasio.

“Joy”, the title track from Phish’s 2009 studio album, offered some space to breathe and rest before the double-punch of two of the band’s heaviest hitters: “Tweezer” and “Fluffhead”. “Tweezer” saw Anastasio scatting over a snappy Gordon bass riff and built to a fine peak before mellowing and sliding into the twists and turns of “Fluffhead”.

Arguably Phish’s most difficult composition, “Fluffhead” is an intricate weave of themes and sections that ends with a searing Anastasio solo, and it proved a fitting end to a second set that featured just about everything that Phish faithful long for—precision, humor, and (occasional) transcendence.

Setlist:

I: Possum, Wolfman's Brother, The Divided Sky, Funky Bitch, Kill Devil Falls, Halley's Comet, Sample in a Jar, NICU, Bouncing Around the Room, Run Like an Antelope

II: Down With Disease > Free, Alaska, Back on the Train, Maze, Joy, Tweezer > Fluffhead

E: Loving Cup, Tweezer Reprise

Review of Phish at Walnut Creek

2010-07-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Phish has always been a band that has been greater than the sum of its parts. However, when those parts fire on all four cylinders, as they did during select shining moments on Thursday night at Walnut Creek, it quickly becomes clear why Phish’s legion of devotees remain so loyally entrenched with the Vermont foursome.

Certainly, each member of Phish had his time in the limelight—drummer Jon Fishman added delicate accents to “Light”; keyboardist Page McConnell delivered an exquisite piano outro to “The Squirming Coil”; bassist Mike Gordon bounced through a breakdown in “Free”; and guitarist Trey Anastasio wove colorful leads throughout the night.

Since Phish’s return last year from a self-imposed five-year break-up, the band has been hesitant to fully develop the slew of musical ideas for which it attained such fame in the mid- to late-‘90s. Because of this reticence to stretch their proverbial legs on its traditional jam vehicles (“Moma Dance”, “Halley’s Comet”), the foursome has ratcheted up the group tension-and-release interplay; this hold-it-now-hit-it ideology shined through in each set, highlighted by “The Divided Sky” in the first set and “Light” in the second.

It’s fitting that these two songs were among the standouts, given that “The Divided Sky” was among the first of Anastasio’s major compositions (recorded on 1988’s Junta), and “Light” among his more recent (on last year’s Joy). Fitting because “Divided” features a long, tightly composed section followed by a soaring solo by Anastasio, under which the other three members drive the guitarist along, pushing him to greater and greater heights. Conversely, “Light” feels like little more than a four-chord jam with lyrics intermingled; however, its peaks and valleys were no less impressive than the twists and turns of “The Divided Sky”.

“Light” featured astonishing group interplay, but on a different wavelength than “Divided”—instead of the guitarist dictating the terms, Fishman and Gordon led the way, allowing McConnell and Anastasio to add texture to a 14-minute jaunt through rocking peaks and atmospheric valleys. Some call this type of groupwork “new” Phish; it’s simply the sound of a mature band whose members listen to one another instead of stepping on each other’s toes (as Phish has been known to do at times in the past).

For all Phish’s improvisational skills, however, the band seemed most at home jamming on other artists’ material—the simple blues progression of Traffic’s “Light Up or Leave Me Alone” brought Anastasio to the forefront as McConnell chomped and comped boogie-woogie chords underneath. Similarly, Gordon drove the band through Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie On Reggae Woman” as an encore, slapping slippery bass lines that guided the group to a sublime , just-past-curfew peak.

Also of note were the covers that the band dusted off for the first time in a long time:
Little Feat’s “Time Loves a Hero” (last played 12.31.02), The Mighty Diamonds’ “Have Mercy” (12.11.99) and “Light Up or Leave Me Alone” (12.30.99).

Setlist:

I: Llama, Roses Are Free, Kill Devil Falls, Time Loves a Hero, Alaska, Water in the Sky, Runaway Jim, Moma Dance, The Divided Sky, Cavern

II: Backwards Down the Number Line, Halley's Comet, Light, Fluffhead, Have Mercy, Light Up or Leave Me Alone, Free, Wading in the Velvet Sea, The Squirming Coil, Suzy Greenberg

E: Boogie On Reggae Woman

Review of Shout Out Louds at The El Rey

2010-05-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

Shout Out Louds' 2005(ish) debut, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, is one of my all-time favorites. I finally got to see them at The El Rey. Here's my review.

Stagecoach coverage

2010-04-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been to all four Stagecoach festivals, but this was my first time working (words and photos). You have to wade through a bunch of stuff, but all my work for the O.C. Register is here.

Coachella coverage

2010-04-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to cover my sixth Coachella for the Register. All of my brief write-ups are located here.

Review of Pavement at the Fox Theater

2010-04-22T10:07:00.001-07:00

After ten years, I finally got my live Pavement fix. Read my review for the Orange County Register here.

Review of moe. at the Fillmore

2010-02-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

My 71st (!) moe. show, and second in San Francisco. I was fortunate enough to cover the band for the first time for the Register.

Review of Mariah Carey at the Gibson

2010-02-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

Never seen anything like this. Here's my Mariah review.

IT'S HERE!

2009-11-17T13:46:00.000-08:00

I'm incredibly pleased and proud to announce the publication of my second novel, Through the Night and Wind. From concept to completion has been an almost two-year labor of love. I've had help from so many wonderful people along the way (you know who you are--your names are in the back of the book) and I feel truly blessed to present this work to the world.

You can buy Through the Night and Wind at two online retailers (for now; there are many more coming in 2010):

1. Infinity Publishing

and

2. Amazon

(Either one works, although Amazon's shipping time is a little speedier.)

Once you have the book in hand (or you're simply curious), check out the Reading Guide, with online links to encyclopedia entries, YouTube videos, full texts of plays and poems, recipes and much, much more.

I hope you enjoy Through the Night and Wind. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

Review of McCoy Tyner at UCLA's Royce Hall

2009-11-14T10:37:00.001-08:00

Incredible. Just incredible. Here's my review for the Register.

Review of Widespread Panic at the Orpheum

2009-11-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

Some good points, some bad points. Loved "Driving Song" into "Disco" and the encores.

Review of Hanson at Club Nokia

2009-11-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

Yeah, they're still touring. Doing a pretty decent job of it, too. Here's my Register review.

Review(s) of Phish's Festival 8

2009-11-02T16:46:00.000-08:00

I wrote four pieces for the Orange County Register: a preview and single reviews of each day's show.

Here are all four in one fell swoop:

Preview

Friday, 10/30

Saturday, 10/31

Sunday, 11/1

Review of Darius Rucker at Club Nokia

2009-10-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

Saw him belt out Prince's "Purple Rain" as an encore. It was awesome. Here's my review for the Register.

Review of Yo La Tengo at the Avalon

2009-10-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

Read my write-up of YLT for the O.C. Register here.

Review of Brad Paisley/Dierks Bentley

2009-10-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

I got my honky-tonk on in Irvine for Go Country 105's Go Fest yesterday. Here's my review for the Register.

Review of Pearl Jam at Gibson

2009-10-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I was fortunate enough to tag along to my second Pearl Jam show. Here's my write-up for the Orange County Register.

Inherent Vice

2009-09-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

As I was reading Thomas Pynchon's most recent (and by far most accessible) new book Inherent Vice towards the end of the summer, this passage jumped out at me as being a fantastic representation of late '60s Los Angeles:

"Doc took the freeway out. The eastbound lanes teemed with VW buses in jittering paisleys, primer-coated street hemis, woodies of authentic Dearborn pine, TV-star-piloted Porsches, Cadillacs carrying dentists to extramarital trysts, windowless vans with lurid teen dramas in progress inside, pickups with mattresses fully of country cousins from the San Joaquin, all wheeling along together down the into these great horizonless fields of housing, under the power transmission lines, everybody’s radios lasing on the same couple of AM stations, under a sky like watered milk, and the white bombardment of a sun smogged into only a smear of probability, out in whose light you began to wonder if anything you’d call psychedelic could ever happen, or if—bummer!—all this time it had really been going on up north."

Through the Night and Wind excerpt

2009-09-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

With only a few weeks left until the release of Through the Night and Wind, I've selected a few more excerpts to share. The following is from the eighth chapter.

We hauled ourselves up onto the swimming platform and sat there for a while, watching tiny schools of minnows and sunfish dart here and there, mostly ignoring our presence just as their brethren had at the Baths and the Caves. My dad’s chest glowed a bright crimson and looked as though he’d been out in the sun without sunscreen for days on end. I poked him with my index finger, watching as the spot flashed bright white, then slowly faded from a pinkish hue to red again.

“You okay?” I asked, laughing as I recalled the look on his face the instant before he hit the water—a mixture of subdued terror and casual indifference as he likely realized there was nothing he could’ve done about it at that point.

“Nothing a cold beer won’t cure.”

“Bad news,” I said. “We’re almost out.”

“Lucky for us we’re less than a hundred yards from a veritable cornucopia of beach bars. What do you say?”

I didn’t hesitate: “Let’s go.”

We spent the next few hours bar-hopping along the white sand beach. Some of the places were relatively upscale establishments, with air conditioning and wait staff; others were how I imagined Bomba’s would appear—rundown little shacks that appeared as if they’d blow over in a stiff breeze (or even a gentle one). We’d taken the dinghy ashore, paid our mooring fee and enjoyed bottles of Red Stripe at Rhymer’s Beach Bar, then criss-crossed the beach, stopping at The Big Banana Paradise Club and Stanley’s Welcome Bar. We sipped Bushwhackers while reclining in lounge chairs, watching a trio of surfers negotiate the rocky reef off to our right at the bay’s eastern point. Observing them paddling out, catching a swell and cutting back and forth across the waves’ faces was certainly impressive; it reminded me of the Pacific. I knew that I’d be back in Santa Barbara in two days and was eager to enjoy the familiar pleasures of home.

The more thought I gave it, the more I realized that when I thought of “home,” that same mnemonic slide carousel dropped in images of Santa Barbara, not Naperville. It showed me the sun rising over Stearns Wharf as I paddled into the brilliant yellow aurora of daybreak; it showed me cruising north on the 101 through wine country; it showed the same fiery ball sinking into the violet Pacific, leaving an impressionistic ruby sky in its wake. It didn’t show me the impeccably groomed outfield at Wrigley or a blurred visage of an El train whizzing through a blustery, inky midnight. In the past week I’d grown to accept the fact that just as my father had left Illinois behind and cast his lot here (or wherever he was destined to wind up), I was growing accustomed to the fact that after two years in California, I had begun to think of it as home—and not just home in the sense that it was some other folks’ home, a place that I was simply passing through on my way somewhere else, but my home.

Note: here's a photo of Cane Garden Bay from one of the aforementioned beach bars.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt

2009-09-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

With only a few weeks left until the release of Through the Night and Wind, I've selected a few more excerpts to share. The following is from the fourth chapter; it picks up right where the previous chapter 4 excerpt leaves off:

I’d been so immersed in observation that I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I stepped onto the sandy beach and my stomach growled angrily. Ken emerged from the ocean a few minutes later, and I could tell by his expression that he was feeling similar pangs. We slipped off our flippers and re-moved our sandals from a mesh bag that he’d been wearing as a backpack. The walk up to the restaurant was strewn with pointy rocks (a lesson he’d learned the hard way on his last trip) and shoes were quite a blessing. I stuffed our snorkeling gear back into the pack and shouldered it for our hike to the summit. The sun beat down on our bare backs, but even the mid-90s heat felt nourishing and merited on my shoulders.

For all the ocean’s beauty and splendor, however, I still couldn’t avoid the tangy grit of the salty water. Our snorkeling equipment was far from the top of the line, and multiples times I’d needed to re-adjust my mouthpiece, inadvertently sucking in huge mouthfuls of ocean water. Fortunately my mask was adequately airtight and I’d avoided eyefuls of saltwater, but my mouth was still awash in a briny bath that I couldn’t escape. It was like being ten years old again, except at 26 I wouldn’t have the same excuse for crying and pouting that I did back then. I bore my salty cross stoically as we marched up the hill, thinking about something—cold beer, soda, anything—to get the taste out of my mouth.

That something came in the form of a great feast at Top of the Baths, the restaurant perched quite literally at its namesake. Its patio, complete with freshwater swimming pool, offers 360-degree views of the surrounding islands, which, in the crystal clear noonday sun, were nothing short of breathtaking, as beautiful a view above sea level as we’d just seen below. Even though we’d only left the ocean 15 minutes earlier, after we placed our order my father and I slid into the pool, where our waitress brought us ice cold concoctions called Bushwhackers, local libations consisting of Amaretto, Bailey’s, Kahlua, vodka, rum, Coco Lopez, and freshly grated nutmeg (thankfully, they held the kitchen sink). The drink was noticeably stronger than the Cooper’s Dreams yesterday, and my dad laughed as I winced my way through the first sip. While it wasn’t a drink I’d order on a regular basis, it did a hell of a job of getting the taste of saltwater out of my mouth; I only wondered if I’d be conscious enough to swim back to the boat after I finished it.

Lunch consisted of crab fritters (rolled balls of crabmeat and breadcrumbs, fried golden brown), hamburgers adorned with juicy slices of fresh pine-apple, and gazpacho (which truly hit the spot on such a scorching day). Exiting the pool as our food arrived, we sat in the shade under a large awning, grateful for even a brief respite from the sun. We’d both earned some color in the past few days, but thanks to Ken’s constant badgering to wear more sunscreen (which, in turn, came directly from my mother—whenever he ordered me to reapply it to my nose, I could hear her tone echoing in his voice), we’d avoided any burns. Instead my pasty, chalky skin was slowly growing to match my father’s bronzed tone. I hadn’t shaved since leaving Santa Barbara, and after a few days, the scruff accumulating on my face and neck was also growing to match his. I ran my hand over my patchy beard, wondering how Bridget would react to it. She was easygoing by nature (which was quite possibly her most attractive feature) and would most likely rib me good-naturedly—calling me the Mitchum Man or Grizzly Adams—but take it all in stride, much like the aquatic world I’d just swum through had for eons.

We bandied about more names for the boat as we lunched, re-hashing Pelican and El Draco and adding new ones to the list, like Cooper’s Dream and Angelfish. A long series of sports-themed names bubbled to the surface: Ryno, a reference to former Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg, one of my childhood heroes, 23 as a nod to the ubiquitous number of Michael Jordan, and Sweetness for Bears legend Walter Payton, one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. None really fit, however, and we decided to go back to the proverbial drawing board and wait for something to jump out at us, confident that when the perfect name reared its head, we’d both know it.

Note: here's a photo of the view from Top of the Baths for reference.

The Dogs of Winter

2009-08-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Kem Nunn's The Dogs of Winter a few weeks ago and was struck by the beauty of this particular passage.

"At close quarters, it was an unnerving spectacle, and yet a thing to behold, full of terror and fluid beauty. The amount of water involved was such that it was like watching a piece of the earth become liquid, as if in some cataclysm, or at the hour of creation. The wave rose first with great mass, like a hill, but this hill was made of liquid, in constant flux, and even as you watched it, it would change its form, turning itself to a long dark wall as the face went vertical and then beyond vertical as the crest began to feather finally to pitch forward, to strike the water far our in front of the face—thus creating the vaunted green room of surfing myth—the place to be if you were to be there at all, on a board, at the eye of the storm, encompassed by the sound and the fury, bone dry in a place where no one had ever been, or would be again, because when the wave was gone the place was gone too and would exist only in memory, or perhaps, if the right person was there, in the right place, with the right equipment, it would exist on film—a little piece of eternity to hang on the wall."

Through the Night and Wind Excerpt (Chapter 10)

2009-08-25T10:15:00.001-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the tenth and final chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

We breakfasted on bagels with cream cheese, apple slices
and mango jam. I then crammed my belongings into my great green backpack, caring little for my usual fold-and-roll routine; instead I stuffed and squeezed my dirty clothes in haphazardly with the worry-about-it-later mentality that often accompanies the end of a vacation. As I forced my gear into the bag, I realized that I’d seriously overpacked—in the week I’d been living on my dad’s boat, I’d worn a bathing suit almost all day every day (I brought two and alternated between them), and with the exception of the few times we’d gotten moderately dressed up to go ashore, I’d either gone shirtless or cycled through the few clean ones that floated near the top of my bag. I set out a fresh pair of underwear, cargo shorts and a Hanes pocket t-shirt, then figured I’d better bathe properly before I spent the next day crammed into the closest of quarters on three flights.

After packing, I ascended the stairs to the cockpit as the sun began its long, slow trudge over the verdant chains of islands and into the cloudless blue sky, before it scorched darkened locals and Coppertone-drenched tourists alike with its golden rays, before the light southeasterly breeze breathed life into starched white canvas sails, carrying long, slender boats across the glistening royal ocean and me, aloft in a shiny metal tube, into the nebulous heavens and north before sprinting across the amber waves of grain and purple mountains’ majesties, bound for another ocean, another body of salt water in which I could dip my toes and feel infinite.

Note: Through the Night and Wind will be available via Infinity Publishing's website as well as my own in October; it will show up at Barnes & Noble and Borders by the end of 2009.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 9)

2009-08-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the ninth chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

Our driver pulled the cab to the side of the road and we dismounted, leaving the air conditioning behind and stepping back in to the mid-June Tortola humidity. Ken paid the fare, then ushered me toward the most dilapidated, neglected building I’d ever seen. Bomba’s truly was a shack—there’s no other way to describe it. Imagine if someone had collected every piece of scrap plywood and every tin roof from every condemned building and assembled (I use this term very, very loosely) it on the most picturesque white sand postcard beach with absolutely no regard for aesthetics, security or safety. Above the makeshift shanty myriad flags flapped lazily—the red-and-white divers’ flag; a green Heineken promo; the skull-and-crossbones Jolly Roger; the blue British Virgin Islands flag featuring the Union Jack in one corner and a central image of St. Ursula (the patron saint of the BVI, clad in white and flanked by a dozen golden oil lamps).

Across the dirt road stood a younger- and more sturdy-looking row of booths referred to as the vendors’ pavilion, where my father informed me we’d need to purchase tickets ($1 for 1 ticket) that we’d use as currency while at the Full Moon Party. Sidled up alongside the ticket booth were t-shirt and beer stations, all manned by friendly locals decked out in their finest carnival attire. All around us people were singing, dancing, drinking, smoking, carousing, flirting, swearing, puking, buying, selling, kissing, pissing, stripping, shouting in a dozen different languages all at once… and every few feet hand-lettered signs announced in bold, black letters: NO VIDEO. Apparently what happens at Bomba’s stays at Bomba’s.

We approached the booth and bought $20 worth of tickets, enough to get us a few beers and a plastic mug full of mushroom tea at the stroke of midnight. After procuring two cold Coronas, Ken gave me the dime tour of the rest of Bomba’s compound (meaning we took a short lap around the beachside clapboard shack); the most amazing part of the whole enterprise wasn't the fact that the building was still standing—I’d heard that every time a hurricane blows through, the locals all help Bomba track down the strewn pieces and put the thing back together—but the amount of flotsam and jetsam tacked, pinned, glued or otherwise stuck to the walls. It looked as if everyone who had ever visited had signed his or her name or left behind a photograph or some other memento of the visit. “We love Bomba” must have been scrawled a hundred times between rusty old metal beer signs and license plates, busted-up lobster traps, a discarded Coleman lantern, and even an abandoned 10-horsepower outboard motor wedged into the crotch of a tree.

Note: here's a photo of Bomba's Shack for reference.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 8)

2009-08-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the eighth chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

Two pair of red-and-green buoys marked the entrance to
Cane Garden Bay, indicating safe passage between the smallish reef off DuBois Point to the north and the long, jutting reef extending out like a hitchhiker’s thumb from Windy Hill and Ballast Bay. I guided us through the short channel into what many regard as the most beautiful anchorage in the Caribbean, the “Jewel of the BVI”. It wasn’t difficult to see how it earned that distinction—a curling inlet where sparkling white sand dissolved into verdant green hills that rolled skyward toward the cobalt blue sky, dotted with cotton clouds that drifted lazily from right to left as if even Mother Nature herself had latched on to the languid island philosophy.

My father stood at the bow with the aluminum boat hook; I brought the Beneteau around the second red buoy and kept to starboard, keeping one eye on the depth gauge and one on the mostly-empty bay before me. I’d driven a few boats in my 26 years, but this was by far the biggest (and I’m guessing the most expensive), and especially after we ran aground yesterday, I was visibly nervous. I’d donned my Cubs hat to keep the sun out of my eyes and realized as I tugged nervously at the brim that I’d sweat through the cap, a combination of nervous energy and the stifling humidity. I promised myself that as soon as we were sufficiently moored I was as good as underwater again.

As I eased the 49-foot craft’s nose up to a spare ball, my father reached out and speared its mooring line, passing the bridle through the line’s eye and securing both ends to our bow cleats. His speed and efficiency were marvels to watch—in marked contrast to the way in which I consistently fumbled with the hook, line, and bridle. Although tying up to a ball was much easier on the helmsman and safer for the ocean floor (as it means fewer anchors scraping across it), I was usually the man manning the bow, and I preferred the no-nonsense approach of simply tossing the anchor overboard and letting gravity (and whomever was steering) do the work.

This time it went off without a hitch, however, and Ken gave me a merited high five as he dropped back into the cockpit. I stifled a yawn as I interlaced my fingers and extended my arms out above my head, letting go of the tension I’d built up since taking the wheel to guide us into the bay.

“We good?” I asked, rolling my head around in a big stretching circle.

“Yeah,” he nodded, looking around at the dozen or so empty mooring balls bobbing in the bay. If the Full Moon Party was all it was cracked up to be, I was certain they’d be full before too long. We’d been wise to leave Jost early; it was barely 2:00 and I surmised in another hour or so Cane Garden would be flush with tourists, cruisers and those simply there for the party.

By the time Ken turned back around, I was already out over the water in mid-dive—part celebratory gesture over my first successful Caribbean mooring, part primitive urge to escape the sweat seeping from every pore in my body. I quickly ditched my hat, sunglasses and soaked-through t-shirt haphazardly on the deck and launched myself out, up and over the aft railing, kicking both feet high above my head and straightening my torso to slice directly into the cerulean bay.

Note: here are a few photos of Cane Garden Bay for reference.

Review of Phish at Shoreline

2009-08-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

I finally made it up north to Shoreline. Read my review for the Bay Area NBC affiliate here.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 7)

2009-08-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the seventh chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

After a straight run to Tortola’s Western tip, we tacked and headed north, back towards White Bay, before the wind eventually hushed and then died completely. We hauled in the sails and secured a line off one of the rear cleats, then engaged in the same mad scramble that Jude and I used to whenever the sails came down in the middle of the lake—trying to strip off shirts, hats and sunglasses to see who could be the first into the water. I won by leaping low over the railing while my father climbed atop it for a higher dive, costing him precious seconds. The sun, hiding behind a grayish wall of haze, wasn’t nearly as oppressive as it’d been the past few days; the water was refreshing regardless, as we were still in the midst of mid-80s temperatures.

It was some 50-odd feet deep where we swam, making it fruitless to bother with the anchor; even though the wind was barely blowing, the boat was constantly drifting, although not so quickly that we couldn’t grab a hold of the line we’d tossed out to go along for the slow ride. I hoisted myself onto the swimming platform off the stern and remembered that I’d brought a tennis ball for this very moment. Soaking wet, I clambered quickly down to my berth, trying to drip as little as possible, eventually emerging victorious in the cockpit, little yellow-green ball in hand. I tossed it out to Ken, comfortably lazing behind the boat. With one hand fixed around the rope, he caught it easily in the other.

“Ready?” he asked, warming up his throwing arm. I climbed up onto the top of the cabin, standing to the port side of the boom and facing the water. He cocked his right arm back and counted “One. Two. Three!”

He winged it good, a high floater. I bent my knees and jumped, keeping my eye on the ball as it sailed toward me, although a little above my head. As I plunged into the ocean, I stretched both hands above my head, cupping them together into a basket for the ball to drop into. Instantly I went under, but felt the fuzzy ball slap against my left hand—I grabbed it tightly and held it aloft, above the water, as proof of my catch. I surfaced a moment later, still holding my prize atop the surface while wiping the salty water from my eyes.

“Nice grab,” he commented as he swam towards the boat for his turn. When he used to play these games of catch with me and Jude, we’d position two of us on one side of the boat and one on the other, then toss the ball back-and-forth like jugglers, trying to time our jumps and throws just right. Even describing it for you now makes the game sound ridiculously simple and a slightly pedantic, but it was one of those rituals that families have, like scratching the living room ceiling with the top of the always-too-tall Christmas tree (a mark for each year) or being the first person to say “rabbits rabbits” to the rest of the family on the first day of each month (it’s supposed to bring good luck). Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I missed our ridiculously simple and slightly pedantic game, though, and I found that familiarity comforting, like a soft, dry towel wrapped around my shoulders after a long swim.

Ken threw the ball back to me as I grabbed hold of the rope trailing behind the boat. I didn’t give him as good a throw, however, and the ball sailed wide, a few feet past his outstretched hand. He swam after the floating yellow sphere and the game continued for a while—leaping, splashing, swimming, throwing, catching, missing a few here and there. It was every American family’s backyard version of father and son playing a game of catch, only our backyard was now a turquoise stretch of tropical ocean instead of a green patch of suburban lawn. The camaraderie was the same, though, just as it had been when there were three of us playing the game, back and forth. We laughed and teased each other good-naturedly when someone threw an errant pass or fudged a catch off his fingertips.

After a half-hour of the game, I climbed atop the cabin for one last jump and noticed that Ken’s attention was focused on the horizon. I looked off to the west and saw what had caught his eye. Remember those amorphous low-lying cumulus clouds I described during the gorgeous sunset last night? Well, they were back—lurking hands curling into menacing fists, their color deepening from a frosted light gray to a tarnished, inky blue. All around us the sea flattened to an eerie glassy calm and I shivered as the temperature dropped; my dad swam quickly to the boat and pulled in the line behind him.

“I should’ve known when the wind died that this was coming,” he muttered, turning the key to fire up the engine. Rubbing the goose bumps back into the flesh of my arms, I climbed down into the cockpit and cautioned a look back at the giant anvil-shaped cloud sweeping toward us, already releasing its payload on St. Thomas, some ten miles away.

“You think we can outrun it?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Ken replied. “Just to be safe, why don’t you throw the sail cover on while I get us going.” I ducked below and grabbed the royal blue canvas cover, then hopped up and snapped it in place over the boom and the lower section of the mast as my father eased the throttle down, steering us back toward Jost Van Dyke and Great Harbour.

Note: I received my first proof from my publisher on Monday. Here's a mock-up of the cover:

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 6)

2009-07-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

The westernmost harbor on Jost Van Dyke, White Bay is a shallow half-mile inlet guarded by a series of natural reefs running across its mouth. There are three entrances through the reef, although it’s highly recommended that incoming boats run between the two largest reefs; for guidance, red and green buoys mark the suggested entrance route. The list of do’s and don’ts also includes not anchoring in the channel (as to block it) or anchoring in the coral that comprises the reefs. Suffice to say the landing at White Bay was going to be the most difficult of our journey, and with that in mind I turned the wheel over to my father and stepped forward to man the anchor as we approached the reefs.

The bay was relatively empty, meaning we wouldn’t need to worry about dodging other boats as we set the anchor, a 25-pound hunk of pointed metal designed to dig itself into the ocean floor. The trick here was obviously to not only avoid the precious coral, but also to make sure that I let out enough line (so the anchor stays put) but not too much, which would let us drift with the wind and possibly swing us into another boat or the reef. As Ken headed the boat into the wind, he shouted up to me and I dropped the anchor into the shallow water (White Bay was 10 feet deep at its maximum; the depth gauge in the cockpit read that our location was about seven) and let first the anchor chain, then the tough knotted rope slide through my hands. The ideal figure is for every foot of depth, one should let out seven feet of anchor line; thankfully, the Sunsail folks had marked our rode at intervals of 25 feet with small orange tags. After one of the tags passed by, I stopped the line and tugged on the anchor and Ken reversed the engine to drag slightly on the anchor so it would set properly on the sandy bottom. I then let one more tag slide through my hands before I pulled a few feet of rope back in and tied the line off on the starboard cleat.

I stayed at the forecastle for a few more minutes, watching the anchor as the wind nudged us gently aside. It held, and as I maneuvered back to the cockpit, my dad was already preparing lunch. We grilled hamburgers and bratwurst and paired them with a garlic potato salad I’d bought from the Harbour Market at Soper’s. It was a blissfully low-key meal, and it did wonders to bolster my mood. Ken washed down his lunch with a Carib, but I stuck with bottled water, not quite ready to climb back on that horse just yet.

We spent the next hour tidying up the cockpit and cabin, then cleaning ourselves in traditional Algir family fashion: we took the bottle of shampoo and bar of soap from my dad’s mesh toiletry kit, dove into the water, and had a good old-fashioned Caribbean bath. As antiquated as it seemed, it was a huge improvement over wedging oneself into one of the cramped heads on the boat, angling the body and the shower nozzle for maximum coverage amidst minimum comfort. Sure, when we emerged from the ocean we still were dripping with salty water (the fresh water shower on the swimming platform was still out of commission), but considering the alternative, I didn’t complain. As my mother used to constantly remark, “For boys, wet means clean.”

After drying off (which didn’t take long in the 95-degree afternoon heat) we changed into fresh clothes and climbed into the dinghy for a trip ashore. White Bay takes its name from the mile-long strip of pristine white sand that runs the length of the harbor. Ashore, a pair of quaint-yet-enchanting establishments border the beautiful beach. At the western end of the inlet sits White Bay Sandcastle, a tiny resort with a dazzling menu (we made reservations for breakfast the following morning); attached to the Sandcastle is the Soggy Dollar Bar, named for the sopping wet payment that many people use after mooring their boats outside the treacherous reef and swimming ashore; at the eastern end is Ivan’s Stress Free Bar and Campground, which country singer Kenny Chesney immortalized in the video for his song “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem.” Given that Jost has been nicknamed “the barefoot island” due to its laid-back atmosphere, at least two-thirds of the song’s title seemed appropriate. (However, it occurred to me that bearing the reputation of being the most laid-back of a series of extraordinarily laid-back islands sounds like holding a diving contest and declaring one person the “most wet.” On Cooper I thought that no place on earth could possibly get more relaxed, yet here we were.)

Note: here are a few photos of White Bay for reference.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 5)

2009-07-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the fifth chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

There’s a legend that alleges Robert Louis Stevenson used Norman Island as the inspiration for his classic Treasure Island. Part of the myth credits Stevenson’s uncle, a sailor, with regaling his nephew with legends of the British Virgin Islands. First sighted by Columbus in 1493, the mystique of the BVI certainly would’ve no doubt intrigued Stevenson, who crafted the first chapters of the book in the cold and dreary Scottish Highlands in 1881, nearly 400 years after the islands’ discovery. The story is augmented by the fact that not a half-mile off the coast of nearby Peter Island lies Dead Chest Island, but here the story grows murkier. It’s unclear whether the real-life island took its name from the sea shanty “Dead Man’s Chest” that Stevenson likely penned for the book or if he lifted the name from a book about the West Indies by Charles Kingsley, an English writer and contemporary of Stevenson’s.

I remember reading Treasure Island as a kid, one of those books that Jude and I raced through after our father consistently praised it as one of his favorites growing up. I mentally added Hispaniola, the name of Captain Flint’s schooner, to our growing list of boat names.

Norman has its share of actual history, too, from Spanish galleons transporting chests filled with silver coins to hapless fishermen braving a storm only to discover gold doubloons washed into their boat. No one’s quite sure where the name of the island originated, but another fable claims that Norman was the name of a pirate who laid claim to owning the island (legally or illegally) sometime during the 18th century. We would certainly find our share of interesting moments during our stay, and while I won’t fill up 34 chapters like Stevenson, I’ll attempt to do the famous island justice.

I awoke just in time to greet the dawn. I’d slept soundly in the cockpit, and awoke feeling as refreshed as I’d been since I left Santa Barbara five days earlier. It struck me that my internal clock was slowly growing adjusted to its temporary time zone, and I passed the time that Ken slept by first quietly cleaning up the dishes and garbage from the previous night, then settling back into the starboard-side bench with The Tempest, which I’d neglected since landing in Tortola. I chuckled knowingly in Act 2 as Ariel’s song floats the stranded Italians off to sleep and Antonio comments that it is “the quality o’ th’ climate” that causes their strange drowsiness—I could certainly appreciate the sentiment. The quiet morning didn’t last long, however, and as soon as the sun rose and burned off the slinky morning haze, the Bight sprang to life with boats leaving their moorings, others quickly snapping up those vacated, and frantic worker-bee dinghies motoring away from their vessels, off to fetch provisions or dump garbage for their queens.

Our trash would need to be disposed of sometime today as well, but considering we’d been cleaning our plates the old-fashioned way (either by devouring our meals or sharing scraps with the fish), we had little more than some food wrappers, dirty paper towels, and empty beer cans and bottles in our wastebasket. Early that morning a company wittily named Deliverance brought its boat around the Bight, the two long-haired white kids at the helm looking like they’d just stepped off their longboards at Leadbetter Point in Santa Barbara. They delivered any and every type of amenity from fresh ice to birthday cakes, and they took away our just-barely-full bag of trash for $2.50. My instinctive read of the two young men proved accurate, and we talked for a few minutes about surf conditions in the BVI before they motored on to the next boat. I learned that there were indeed a few good beach and point breaks in the islands, centered mostly around Tortola, but with so many dangerous reef bottoms (both exposed and hidden), they suggested I stick to snorkeling.

Note: here's an aerial photo of Norman Island for reference.

Review of Faith Hill at the Hollywood Bowl

2009-07-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

With the Bowl Orchestra. Read my review for the Orange County Register here.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 4)

2009-07-13T09:15:00.001-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the fourth chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

The wind held, we made excellent time, and after an hour of snorkeling the Baths, we hiked up to a tiny restaurant atop the island for lunch. The Baths—a series of naturally occurring tide pools, underwater tunnels, rock arches and scenic grottoes—line the white sandy beaches of southern Virgin Gorda, a little over a mile from Spanish Town, the island’s main hamlet. Columbus’ “Fat Virgin” was at one point the capital of the BVI, and American philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller even built a hotel and harbor on the island in the 1950s. Just as the Rockefellers were instrumental in establishing and maintaining national parks in the U.S., a number of spots in the BVI had also been designated as National Parks in an effort to preserve their natural beauty.

Trust me: natural beauty was something these islands had in spades. The Baths were like nothing I’d ever seen—an anomalous formation of huge boulders, creating beautiful pools where the ocean creeps in between the rocks. The enormous slabs of granite (some nearly as large as our 49-foot boat) point to Virgin Gorda’s volcanic past, where superheated magma cooled into giant molten slabs, which over the course of tens of thousands of years, eventually eroded into the labyrinth of geologic wonder that was now called the Baths.

Because dinghies aren’t permitted on the beach, we couldn’t motor in and haul the small raft onto the shore, like we’d done at Cooper yesterday. Luckily, we didn’t need much besides our snorkeling gear and money for lunch, so after securing the boat to a buoy, we plunged into the tiny waves lapping at the sides of the boat and swam in. We spent just over an hour exploring, and though the Baths were crowded, we made our way to Devil’s Bay, the next inlet south, and found ourselves amid far fewer humans and amongst a breathtaking mélange of varying kinds of ocean life: bristly sponges that resembled desert cacti; waving green sea fans; multi-colored jacks with black stripes along their dorsal ridges and brilliantly regal black-and-yellow angelfish drifting and darting along the coral ledges and caves.

I’d never seen anything quite like it, and although I stayed far closer to the shore than my father did, I couldn’t help but marvel at the unspoiled splendor. As the pristine white sand gave way to a mottled light brown that melted into borderless gradients of cyan and sapphire, nowhere did the aquatic life seem bothered by our intrusion; the fish and plants simply went about their daily activities as if we were merely other big mammals swimming overhead. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, perhaps something about ecological symbiosis, or maybe just the permissive idea of going with the proverbial flow that nature accomplishes so well and humans emulate so poorly.

Note: here are some photos of The Baths at Virgin Gorda for reference.

Review of Old 97's at the Fonda

2009-07-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

What's so great about the Barrier Reef? Read my review for the Orange County Register here.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 3)

2009-07-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the third chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

I walked unsteadily down the dock towards the boat,
suddenly aware that the entire marina was bustling: engines spit and sputtered, halyards clinked and clanked, people drawled and droned. After two years of teaching, I’d grown to be a morning person, but considering my internal clock read just after 5:00 AM, it took me a while to come around. As I took in the boats refueling, dockhands loading and unloading gear, and finally my father, clad only in a pair of khaki shorts, hanging over the port side of his new boat, attempting to reach the waterline with a sudsy sponge… with all the activity and energy surging around me, I couldn’t help but awaken.

“That’s got to be easier from the water,” I called out. With the flick of his wrist, the sponge sailed through the air and landed at my feet.

“If you want to swim in this marina water, the job is yours,” he said, hoisting himself into a sitting position atop the cabin. He looked as if he’d been up for a while, working. He was skinny, like me (and like Jude), and a deep, weeks-old Caribbean tan made the tufts of gray-and-white hair on his chest stand out even more than usual. He brushed a few stray sweaty hairs from his face and smiled at me, a wry, lopsided grin like the one he offered yesterday when I first saw him striding down the dock; the kind of genuine, benevolent smile exchanged between family members like a secret handshake or an heirloom passed down from generation to generation. He was letting me know that everything was going to be okay, even if it was abundantly clear that he didn’t wholeheartedly believe it.

We spent the next hour checking and double-checking the boat’s vitals: making sure the sheets were coiled and knotted where they should be coiled and knotted and loose and unencumbered where they should be loose and unencumbered; inspecting the gauges on our gas tank and fresh water to ensure we’d have plenty of both; running the bilge pump to flush any stray ocean water from the lowest part of the interior hull below the waterline. Following my father’s lead, I’d shed my shirt and worked bare-chested in the glimmering mid-morning sun. For the first time in months, I was engaged in real manual labor—lifting and stretching, bending and pulling—and the soft, tensile ache in the muscles of my shoulders and back—as well as the sweat that wicked away my sunscreen—were physical manifestations of my efforts, and I wore them proudly.

After our inspection, my father fired up the inboard Yanmar 76-horsepower engine, and as it idled, I climbed over the starboard rail and onto the dock, releasing the docklines but hanging on to the rail to guide us. With my dad’s go-ahead, I walked the 49-foot boat forward out of the slip, waiting until the last possible moment to leap on board, swinging around a stable halyard.

As I gazed out beyond the reef to the Sir Francis Drake channel and the coruscating Caribbean, my heart swelled with lofty pride at my—no, our—undertaking. I looked back at my father behind the wheel, and behind his mirrored aviators, I sensed the same feeling of elation, of freedom from the world around us. He looked comfortable, he looked at peace, he looked… natural, as if his whole life had been leading up to this one singular moment, when everything he owned was under his control and everyone he cared about was on board—he truly was the captain, and my admiration for him had never been greater.

Note: here's a photo of a Beneteau 49 for reference.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 2)

2009-06-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the second chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

As we drove, I learned that my cabbie, Berihun, had lived in Tortola nearly all of his 40-odd years, the British diacritic a result of his birth and rearing in South Africa. His father had served as a police officer on this, the largest of the islands, after bringing Berihun and his mother to the BVI in the late ‘60s. He proved to be a treasure trove of knowledge of the islands, and by a serendipitous stroke of dumb luck, he was my initial guide to paradise.

Leaving the airport behind, we crossed a small two-lane bridge connecting Beef Island to the primary mass of Tortola. According to Berihun, the new bridge had been dubbed Queen Elizabeth Bridge during the British Monarch’s visit to Tortola in 1967, the same year Berihun’s family arrived. So the legend goes, prior to the bridge, people crossed from Beef Island via a small wooden raft, just large enough for one car, that operators pulled back and forth between the two islands. A cross-breeze gusted through the windows of the makeshift taxi and I silently thanked Queen Elizabeth and Terrance B. Lettsome for replacing the raft-and-pulley system with this concrete causeway, which, although not nearly as romantic (at least in the Hemingway sense of the word) as its ancestor, felt far safer and imminently more reliable.

I glanced down at my watch, surprised that there wasn’t much traffic for just after 11:00 am on a Thursday. Then, remembering my pledge outside the hotel in San Juan, I slid the watch off my wrist and stuffed in it my small backpack with my cell phone. I made myself a small promise that I’d take them back out when I landed in JFK on the return flight (and not a second before). Berihun narrated as he drove, pointing and gesturing out the window with his left hand as we passed Buck Island, a tiny glob of greenery a few hundred feet offshore. Apparently Buck is a private island, and when its former owner began building a bridge connecting it to Tortola proper, he discovered that under BVI law, the bridge would’ve legally enabled the public to use the island’s beaches, so he abandoned the project.

“Some people very territorial here,” Berihun mused. “Most everybody very friendly, but some folks just don’t want to see nobody. They build big houses on the hills…” he waved his right hand at the foliage outside the passenger side windows, creeping straight up in a wall that towered high over the two-lane road. “They isolate themselves from the world.”

“I can understand that,” I replied.

“You one of those?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s no way for a man to live. People need other people. You listen to Simon and Garfunkel?”

“Sure.” I was practically raised on Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor and John Prine. My parents had a ton of vinyl, but my dad only had half a dozen cassettes in his car, and when we’d go on road trips, he’d listen to the same tape over and over and over, never caring that he’d just heard the same songs 40 minutes before, and 40 minutes before that.

“You know that song, ‘I am a Rock’?” Berihun asked into my memories.

“Yeah,” I answered, pretty sure I knew where my guide was taking this line of questioning. “A rock feels no pain and an island never cries,” I sang poorly. Berihun laughed out loud, but I took no offense. I knew I was a terrible singer, and my blurting out the lyrics was more for his value than mine.

“You got it,” he said, honking the horn as he rolled the cab to a gentle stop behind a beat-up pickup truck idling in our lane. “It’s actually John Donne,” he added, without looking back at me. I didn’t hear him clearly, so I asked him to repeat what he’d just said. Instead, Berihun leaned his head out his window to see what was holding us up and nearly had it taken off by a car speeding past in the opposite direction. He hooted and ducked back inside quickly, returning to our discussion as if he hadn’t just nearly been decapitated.

“John Donne. 17th century English metaphysical poet. He wrote ‘No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ Nobody is an island. You, me, we’re no islands; we’re part of the main. You’re not an island, are you?”

“I guess not.”

“You a rock?”

“That depends,” I said. “Sometimes being a rock is a good thing.”

“Like when?”

“What about Saint Peter? Christ told Peter that he was his rock. Upon Peter he’d build his church. That’s a ringing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.”

“That’s true,” Berihun agreed, laying on the horn until the pickup finally lurched into motion, hiccupping its way up the winding flora-bordered road. “I suppose it can be a good thing. You know what I’m saying though, right?”

“Yeah, I get it,” I assented. Berihun rounded a bend, and as the tall trees parted, I caught a glimpse of the sandy reef, the three long rows of docks, and the big red-roofed buildings. I had arrived.

“Hodges Creek Marina,” my driver announced as he flicked his left turn signal and swung into the small parking lot. “Home of Sunsail.” I swallowed heavily and with some difficulty. Here I was, after a couple days on the go I already felt like I’d been gone a week or more. Leaving Santa Barbara was a distant memory already, and I still had another week ahead of me. Berihun shifted into park and retrieved my bag from the rear hatch. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t move; I just sat there, staring through the front windshield at the front (or back, I wasn’t quite sure) of the building before me. This was far and away the most impulsive thing I’d ever done, and even a few fated feet from the door, I still wasn’t sure I had the courage to go through with it.

“Hey, Saint Peter!” Berihun rapped on the roof with his knuckles.

“Thomas,” I replied, shaking myself out of my daze.

“No sir. Saint Thomas about 20 miles west.” He pointed off in the distance, towards what I had to believe was the west. “You are in the land of the turtle dove, named by Christopher Columbus himself.”

“Sorry,” I said as I climbed out of the back seat. “That’s my name: Thomas.” I paused for moment—hearing my full Christian name out loud for the first time since my mother passed, standing at the threshold of a great adventure (or an epic disaster), my head was swimming.

“Tom,” I corrected.

“Well, Tom, it has been a pleasure serving you.” He stuck out his hand and I reached for my wallet, not realizing what his gesture truly meant.

“No, my friend,” Berihun said again. “Handshake first. Pay later.”

I palmed my wallet with my left hand, meeting my right hand in his with a firm, gracious shake and a smile. Upon release, I paid my new friend and thanked him for his help. (I hadn’t bothered to ask how he knew so much about 17th century English metaphysical poets.) As I walked gingerly toward the main building, he climbed back into the cab and rapped on the roof again.

I turned and he pointed at me. “Remember,” he said, “no man is an island, including you.”

I tried to squeak out a “thank you,” but could only wave as Berihun pulled out onto the highway, the little car’s horn bleating plaintively as he drove away.

Through the Night and Wind excerpt (Chapter 1)

2009-06-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

My mother died last month.

I know for a fact that it was exactly one month ago: Monday, May 15th—a week after Mother’s Day. I got a phone call from my father: “Tom, it’s dad. She’s gone.”

Grace Elizabeth Algir had been diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer nearly two years earlier, right after I moved from Illinois to California. I had been out of college for two years, during which time I’d worked briefly at a magazine in Chicago, then gone back to grad school to get my teaching certificate. It felt like some ridiculously absurd joke that she got sick as soon as I left; for a while, I even blamed myself, but she never once made me feel guilty for leaving. “Follow your dreams,” she constantly told my brother and me as we grew up, so I did. The only problem is that my dreams took me approximately 2,078 miles away from my dying mother.

I don’t know the exact scientific name of her disease other than that it was lung cancer and it was terminal. (At first my dad didn’t tell me about the terminal part.) I’m sure the doctor told me at some point, but I was so spaced out most of the time I visited the hospital that I’d be hard pressed to remember. I didn’t really want to know then and I’m still not 100% sure I want to know now; it’s probably some kind of defense mechanism—denial, surely—that allowed me to keep her disease at arm’s length. My father and I genuinely thought she could fight it and win (I especially believed this, given that he’d neglected to tell me that she was, without question, going to die). When the diagnosis was eventually revealed, her cancer had already spread beyond cure. Her fight was to live as long as possible, which wound up being nearly 20 months.

You could tell she knew, though. During the last few months the spark that was my mother’s once indomitable spirit had been extinguished, like someone had licked his fingertips and pinched it, her smile and the gleam in her eye the lingering smoke that slowly drifted out of the room, leaving nothing but a charred wick, the shell of a vital, effervescent woman. So out went the candle, leaving us darkling. Incredibly kind and compassionate, insightful and observant, loyal and devoted—my mother was more than I can put into words, and now she’s gone.

For 28 years she taught kindergarten in my hometown of Naperville, Illinois, a now-bustling suburb about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. Grace was a fervent reader, and devoured just about anything—novels, magazines, newspapers, poems, short stories, biographies, essays, criticism… you name it, she read it. Her passion for the written word no doubt sparked my own, and toward the end, when her body was confined to a hospital bed, she wrote dozens upon dozens of letters to just about everyone she knew. I received the lion’s share of these, and they’re stashed away under my bed with one of my most prized possessions: a leather-bound of copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that she gave me the day I left for California. I haven’t been able to bring myself to reread any of the letters since she died, although in the past few weeks I’ve once or twice dug out the New Balance shoebox in which I keep them. I’ll lift up the sheet that overhangs the edge of the bed and slide the box along the carpet; I’ll even begin lifting the lid, but I don’t have the courage to open it. The gaping hole in my heart has yet to heal, and reading those letters would be like pouring salt into that wound.

In the month that followed the funeral, my father and I spoke on the phone far more frequently than we ever had before, but in truth we said very little. My girlfriend Bridget and I flew home for the funeral, of course, but my dad and I didn’t say much to each other during those few days I was home. It wasn’t that we were angry or upset with each other; we just didn’t really have anything to say (even though there were hundreds of things we should have said). Sure, we discussed sports as usual—standings, box scores, draft picks, managerial blunders—it was the first thing that we’d bonded over when my brother Jude and I were young and was still often the first topic broached. But we didn’t talk about anything; it was more like we talked around everything, artfully dancing around the subject of my mother as if we were careening through Tchaikovsky.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You want to know about the boat, right? I’m getting to it.

In the month after mom passed, my dad sold the house I grew up in and his and my mother’s cars, unloaded their mutual funds, IRAs, and anything else that had any sort of attachment or connection to her—furniture, clothing, even family photos and heirlooms—and boarded a plane at O’Hare, flew to Miami, connected in San Juan and finally Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, where he took possession of a 49-foot, six-inch long Beneteau sailboat that displaced nearly 14 tons in the water.

My father, a 55-year-old retiree and widower named Ken Algir, was now the proud owner of an ocean-going sailboat, and was determined to sail the ocean. The ocean comprised of salty, salty water.

And lo and behold, I was going to join him.

Review of The 88 at the Key Club

2009-05-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

The 88 tackled Bob Dylan's classic Highway 61 Revisited on Thursday at the Key Club. My review is here.

Review of the Allman Brothers/Doobie Brothers at the Greek

2009-05-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

With guest appearances from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Bruce Willis. Read my review here.

Review of The Dead at the Forum

2009-05-10T11:41:00.000-07:00

Read my first contribution to the Orange County Register here.

Links

2009-05-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

For your perusal:

My official home page.

City Museum, my indie rock band.

The Low Countries, my country band.